Jacob Way, Producer for I Shall Remain talks about several ideas that popped up during production of the game and the need to prioritise them in the light of development resources:

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Some more ideas that were to be or not to be:
Drivable vehicles in the game demo &rarr; not to be due to time constraints. Though they will be there for players in the full game.
An incredibly complex single player story &rarr; we turned this down in favor of free roam with a series of 'story' missions. This in the end will free up man hours for the multi player platform.
Zombie virus travels in clouds, after zombies are killed the remaining virus particles lifts up into the air and flies away to an unknown location. &rarr; (shh!! ) This one's on the back burner. You might notice the zombie bodies disappearing into a black cloud in the demo. Now you will know what this is.

The game looks very promising and I like the idea of a Zombie survival game in general. I'm not a big fan of such a high bird's eye camera view. Personally, I'd prefer the viewpoint be lowered about 50% and the angle cut to about 45 degrees. Right now, the view is too high and the angle too steep. More of an over-the-shoulder view. Again, this is a personal preference.

skavenhorde

December 6th, 2011 17:11

This does sound promising. Hope to see more of it soon.

villain of the story

December 7th, 2011 12:30

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Character-centered camera. → thanks to the feedback from users on RPG watch, we killed that bad idea. We scooted the camera back so you can see further in front of you, and not so much behind you.

What what what? I single handedly compelled you at Codex to change the camera and now it was RPGWatch all of a sudden?

villain of the story

December 7th, 2011 23:19

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One idea that we plan to go forward with, even though its benefit is uncertain, is the ability to capture zombies and then take them to a ring and make them fight to the death.. for money. We had to put gambling in somewhere..

Or you could rip off Day of the Dead, you know. There, people in the military base capture zombies for the experiments of the resident scientist/doctor.

How could this be made meaningful in a game? Research for simple trinkets to use on zombies, maybe. For instance, maybe some kind of smoke bomb (and when I say bomb, I only mean a bottle or similar containers that would be easy enough to break or spread when thrown) made with simple household -and some rare- chemicals that might have various effects on or against zombies.

Temporarily repel zombies from the agent, or draw the zombies to the agent. Slow them down. Stupefy them. Blind them. Taint a someone with the agent so he becomes zombie bait where the zombies would or might ignore the others for a while, etc. Simple but effective things that one couldn't immediately know in a zombie apoc. without someone fiddling with it.

And zombie fights could work. The Walking Dead comic series had it at some point in a particular survivor community and it didn't feel out of place or retarded.

villain of the story

December 7th, 2011 23:48

Serum as currency is practical but works against suspension of disbelief. Serum is supposed to be a highly valued commodity, a treasure. To use it as currency trivializes survival. Why not assign a generic value to things and promote good old trading of goods, and apply local price modifiers to reflect what is in demand in any given community. If you have to use something as currency, fuel, bullets, water or simple dry medicine (ie. pills) makes a lot more sense. You could also use all of them, of course.

xSamhainx

December 10th, 2011 03:56

zombies generally dont attack each other tho, so i dont know if the "zombie fights" would really work. If they were destroying each other, there would be no problem in the first place!

villain of the story

December 10th, 2011 11:20

Throw in people, then.

I hope the developers are enjoying the overwhelming reception of their game at the Watch, btw.

skavenhorde

December 10th, 2011 12:00

I've liked what I've seen so far. I don't feel a need to nitpick over the details. I'm buying this game once it hits the market, guaranteed.

Philistine

December 10th, 2011 15:16

To make the cage match make more sense it should be live vs zombie. Who wouldn't want to be known as a bare-handed zombie ass-kicker?

-There's a whole lot of talk about the zombie fights! This game is make believe, and therefore we can make it make sense with one line of dialogue. Off the top of my head, perhaps they spray traces of human blood on the zombies and that makes them fight each other. Of course, we haven't yet worked out the details that will make it work well. At first I didn't like the idea, but the reaction I get when I tell people about it changed my mind.

-Zephyr, I have a demo reel up. Sorry fraps made it a bit laggy but you can check out the new camera set up. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDev0-3e-S0 ) You might have to skip to another part of the video, I dont have my flashlight on in the beginning so its hard to tell where the main character is.

-Villain, I will continue to read though all of your comments. You hate my game, but yet you are passionate about it! To make the gambling meaningful we are going to have it on only one location of the map- in the bandits den. (there's bad humans too in the game that ambush you) and have good scripts/story to back it up.

The demo is coming out very soon! Im thinking about releasing in on Desura, make it easy for everyone. I think you will be happily surprised with the story : )